Interesting piece of research out today from Pew Internet and The American Life Project which shows that longer forms of online writing are giving way to micro-blogging and status updates:
Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher for Pew and the lead author of the study, told the Associated Press that the ability to do status updates had “kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging”.
Although there were modest rises in the numbers of people blogging who were over 30 (yup, that’s me) the number of younger people, the numbers in the teenage bracket has halved and – perhaps more concerning – the number in the 18-29 bracket has fallen by about 40% in 2 years. As the BBC report on the news put it:
One student said teenagers had lost interest in blogging because they needed to type quickly and “people don’t find reading that fun”.
Should we even care? Perhaps not. But I do have some concerns which take in some wider issues of online reading – ie, we are becoming no more than scanners. We rarely take the time to read in depth, but immediately want the precis. Perhaps it’s due to a fall in quality over the years, but I’ve noticed less and less comments on my blogs – and on other people’s too. With changing reading habits people are less likely to sit down and read an entire newspaper or magazine – and this must have long term influences on the depth and breadth of our understanding of issues.
If the generation following us to no more than write about their immediate feelings in a series of status updates, we risk seeing a group of people who have a narrower view of relationship and self-awareness. And if these people are decreasingly interested in reading anything over 100 words, it is also unlikely that they will write anything over that length either. Especially if they can’t type that quick.
Who knows, this could be made better or worse by the introduction of devices like the iPad: a great ‘output’ device – but not a proper writing tool. But with a screen large enough to read more comfortably on – though a processor fast enough to encourage flicking.
Perhaps you’ve not even got this far, but if you have, you might be interested in a post I wrote a while back reflecting on Clooney’s film Good Night and Good Luck – and the parallels with the dumbing down of TV that that explored.
As for me and this site, I’ll carry on writing longer stuff. Why? Because, as the adage goes, you write to discover, not to reveal. And I’m not going to find out much about myself or my faith in 140 characters.





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